Am I being harsh to finish with my date over his ‘home cooked’ dinner?

[WeeksJa]

I’ve had a few dates with a man over the last couple of months, and he invited me over to his last night for what he promised would be a ‘home cooked’ dinner. He knows I like my food and eat healthily/well.

This is what he served up:

Starter - Gyoza’s from the supermarket
Dinner - Curry; one of those kits where you fry off the spices and add provided sauce etc
Desert - chocolate brownie (supermarket purchased)

It just felt a bit…low effort. Not what I’d describe as ‘home cooked’.

My friends are divided - a couple say to finish it, a couple say to give him the benefit of the doubt, feedback my disappointment and see if he can redeem himself.

Thoughts welcome!

I think he's just clueless, and I base this on his choice of food for a meal as much as describing it as home-cooked.

I'm coming over all Charles Boyle on this, but those foods don't go together as a special meal, which the hapless BF plainly implied it was.

OP using sex as reward, or withholding it in this case, comes over as coarse, though possibly the meal made her vagina slam closed - so often used on MN as a legitimatise reaction to the the ick.

He’s had a narrow escape !!

Men who are pretty wealthy are not usually that into cooking, not in my generation (over 50s) anyway.

I can see if you are a foodie, this would be disappointing.

This would be irrelevant in my list of important qualities for a life partner, plus if I fancied them and thought the relationship had legs, I wouldn't finish it over this, as it's in the 'nice to have' not deal-breaker category.

Then again, I date short men, so what would I know!

We have reached peak Mumsnet.

I don’t really appreciate what you’re implying and it’s interesting that that’s the bit you took away from my post, but I will absolutely agree that someone without a job or who wasn’t financially stable would have been a dealbreaker for me, more so than not being a great cook. 🤷‍♀️ I guess everyone has their own baseline.

Anyone who stumbled across this thread would think it's the 19-fucking-50s!

maybe I’ve just been lucky/go for different types to most of the posters on here; but in the 3 relationships I’ve had that went to cooking on a date, I’ve been made things like racks of lamb/steaks/lobster all with nice sides like dauphinoise or similar.

it literally wouldn’t occur to me that an adult over the age of 30’s top impress meal would be a jar of sauce and chicken plus stuff you put in a microwave.

so I wouldn’t realise that you needed to detail that.

I’ve just realised that the posters who have come on the thread at the end, 6pm ish, rather than the afternoon posters, have been far more ‘yanbu’.

I agree with PP, 'home cooked' is not 'cooked from scratch'. Very different. I am always very nervous hosting people in my home, so I'd possibly take some shortcuts too.

Meaning?

I’m going to have to respond to this in capitals because you are about the tenth poster on this thread who has tried to denigrate women by suggesting there is something wrong with them if they are single. Which is an abhorrent attitude that keeps many women in thoroughly shit relationships…

SINGLE WOMEN ARE CHOOSING TO BE SINGLE. MEN ARE NOT HARD TO CATCH.

I haven't read TFT, but this reminds me a bit of when my now husband invited me over for dinner at his house. He cooked a spaghetti bolognese, and it was really good (still is btw!) and we had a lovely evening we still both remember fondly. I recounted this to an old friend a couple of months later, who scoffed 'Spag bol?! That's a really bloke thing to do!'.

It took me a few months to realise she was just jealous.

I do wonder when I read these dating threads, how anybody ends up together. Then I remember, according to the headlines, they don't!

I'm saying this as somebody who is pretty foodie, cooks everything from scratch, including bread, and would be quite happy with what was served when eating at somebody else's house.

Agreed. I read that and thought ‘yuck’ .
If you think of sex as a ‘reward’ for him and not something you enjoy equally , then it’s definitely not a compatible relationship.

It was an observation.

I’ve been on and off this thread all day, and the back end has seen far more Yanbu.

What are you trying to suggest?

What? You use sex as a reward? And then you go on about knowing your worth?

If all it takes is a meal made from scratch it obviously isn't very much 😂

He can't cook, but maybe he can spell gyozas without an apostrophe. 🤷🏼‍♀️

I’m not suggesting anything. I’m pointing out that the number of posters who think the op is not being unreasonable have increased once it became evening.

You would seriously end a relationship because he cooked that meal for you? The poor man. Mumsnet gets more and more mad by the day.

There are very few things my DH wouldn’t cool from scratch, including at random times of the day or evening if I even mention something I fancy. Beef Wellington, dauphinoise potatoes, and huevos rotos (not all together!) have featured in recent weeks. He makes me a homemade Victoria sponge with fresh cream and strawberries on my half- heyday each year. However this man also eats ham and jam sandwiches (as in, together) and has been known to serve Mayflower curry sauce fresh from B&M. It seems short-sighted to write someone off on the basis of one meal, and even more so if that person doesn’t have much experience of cooking from scratch. Of course a woman should be expected to teach a man to cook, nor should she have to settled for someone who isn’t a match, but the OP wasn’t content just to declare him not a match, was she? She was determined that he’s a tight-ass loser who doesn’t deserve a catch such as herself, and in taking that stance showed herself to be egotistical, judgemental, and a bit crass.

I would think he was a bit naive/dim and had low standards, or assumed you that of you.

Enough to think that this is a home cooked meal AND what you would also think was one, or not dim but assumes you are and wouldn't notice/would put up with it anyway/wouldn't say anything/this is what YOU would be impressed by.

I am not saying I would dump him over it, or that I would think he was a bad person necessarily. I would have to say something, even in a jokey way, if I decided to stay with him though. Or passively aggressively cook him something from scratch.

I had a boyfriend do something similar when we were in our early 20s. Go on and on about how great a cook he was. Served some sort of (I think rice) noodles in a packet sauce. The sauce was very nice, to be fair, but he didn't use enough of it and the noodles soaked most of it up completely so I just had some slightly flavoursome but dry noodles.

If I was coming in from the pub drunk and wanted something quick to eat and he offered me that, I'd likely think he was great! But 'I am a great cook and I will make you a fabulous meal!' territory it was not.

Poor fella

Red flags?! For not cooking a meal to your expectations and having the AUDACITY to use a curry kit?! 😂
FFS man, yes you should leave him - give the poor sod a head start you're a "right one" and set him free! 😁

It depends how highly you value your partner being able to cook is.

it wasn’t ’just one meal’ this was his ‘impress meal’

i rate being able to cook high in what I’m looking for in a partner. I like good food, and don’t want to cook all the time.

I get that many people don’t mind doing all the cooking, and/or are happy to eat junk food; and that’s fine and up to them.

it’s not for me though.

You can end a relationship for any reason you like, but the first time my husband cooked for me, he heated up tinned soup and garlic bread, then made spaghetti bolognaise from scratch - but forgot to put in any tomato, so really it was just mince and pasta

The second time he cooked frozen pizza and Haagen dazs icecream.

I just concluded that he wasn't a great cook! And that's fine, he has other skill sets - we've now been married nearly 30 years, and he does cook about twice a week. Still not amazing at it, but he can bung stuff in the slow cooker, and can do a great spag bol (he remembers the tomatoes now)

If I'd thrown him back 30 years ago because he couldn't cook, I'd have missed out on a very happy life with him.